Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures

Again, Exodus speaks to my life.  I love this passage.  Here we see Moses, giving his all, really trying hard to be the servant God believes he can be.  And Aaron, bless his heart, is just trying as hard as he can to please the people.  We read of the crowd becoming anxious, demanding a sign.  We all know the story.  Aaron caves and makes an idol of gold and silver for the people to worship.  You know the rest – God gets mad, sends Moses back down the mountain threatening to kill them all.  (Kind-of reminds me of my father – “don’t make me pull this car over”!)  And so the story goes…

What I find most interesting about this story is that even though I know the story, I continue to be the Aaron in the story.  I am continuously seeking what God has placed right in front of me and when I can’t get it or see it, I make something for myself!  What does it take to be still and know?

This story is remarkable for so many reasons, but most of all because it takes into consideration the humanness of Moses and Aaron and allows the readers to come into the story at a very crucial point.

Job is one of the most loaded texts in Scripture. How do we as Christians look at such a conflicting story of God bringing arbitrary suffering to a man? Reading this book again, I find myself more and more interested in the original purpose of Job for the communities it was written for.

In Exodus chapter 20 how many commandments did God give?  And who did God give the commandments to?

In Exodus Chapter 19 when the people said V19 “Then they said to Moses, Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die. V20 Moses said to the people, Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin.”  Why were the people scared of God?

Many times when we read the Psalms, we run across sections that are quite violent and claiming victory before it has happened.  Of course, the Psalmist believes God is on their side. This makes complete sense.  Dr. Maxwell Maltz, a world-renowned plastic surgeon and author of Psycho-Cybernetics coined the term “psychocybernetics” to describe such visualizations.  Okay, not all the violence, but in battle… violence makes sense. Cybernetics is the goal-striving behavior of machines and mechanical systems, and the “psycho” on the front of it causes it to be applied to the human thought processes.

Basically, Maltz says that our goal-striving mechanisms seek to accomplish the pictures created in our imagination.  This goal-striving mechanism cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy.  It needs images to be vivid to work effectively.

In That Winning Feeling! by Jane Savoie (reserve rider for 1992 US Olympic Dressage Team, coach for US team at 1996, 2000 and 2004 Olympics) goes into how we can apply the psychocybernetics principles to our daily lives in order to achieve our goals. Although this seems like something that is relatively new, it is not.  We see it being played out in the Psalms, as well as in every  motivational speech that we hear before any sports activity.  We are to visualize our victory.  We are to go out there and play like we are already the winners.  This doesn’t mean to slack off, but to do everything possible to bring our visualizations into reality. In other words, it makes sense for the Psalms to carry these violent tones and to claim victories.  Who goes into battle desiring to lose?  Who sets up tactical defenses with the hope that they fail?  The Psalmist is claiming victory, visualizing how God is on their side and helping them.  It does not matter if the Psalmist is reminding the people of past events, the pictures are so vivid that the mind remembers the joy of victory and strives to achieve it again.

I have read Job

I have read Proverbs.